Persephone

The layout never really had a fixed location until Ben took it on - I was one of the builders of it - although the buildings apart from the low relief building at the back all are based on Yorkshire prototypes. The low relief one (my build) is based on that at Great Rocks jct in Derbyshire.

And this is the culprit, Mr Lord, one of the Rochdale reprobates. He's a lot to answer for lol. I went across yesterday (and looking out of the window today glad I did) to do a bit but the main objective was to rifle through Model Signal Engineering stock before he disappears off the exhibition circuit and you have to use that user unfriendly website! I also had to see the nice man at Megapoints for one of his excellent servo control boards. Now the track laying and point building on Greenbooth is in sight its time to turn my head to signalling. As for the show, Ive never seen Shwt in the flesh before and was really impressed. On the surface it looks almost minimalist but there's a lot of detail and its very well modelled. The other star of the show was Bournemouth West, again a new layout to me and well worth the entry fee alone. Extremely good modelling, well observed stock formations, and those signals, wow. Brilliant. Boston Frodsham also caught my attention and I watched it for quite a while. Mentions in dispatches too for Farringdon, Kepier Colliery and Brighton East, all seen before but always worth watching again. Meanwhile good luck today all.

More progress on the pointwork at the boiler house end of the layout today. More point blades to file now.

Cheers Lez Sorted!

And here's today's piece of work. The wonderful set of crossings on the three way at the engine house end of the sorting sidings. All in all about two and a half hours work including the two aborted pieces of rail which I got wrong. There's seven pieces of rail in this assembly, all bent or filed to a rare assortment of angles. I did try pinning the assembly down to the plan, but the ply used by Tim Horn is stern stuff and just laughed off my attempts to pin it securely and fast. It held it to a point but....... I ended up holding it down as well which is great fun when you are wielding a soldering iron! Strangely enough Ive had more trouble building the 1:6 crossing which fits below it. Time to give up for the day and come back to it at weekend after two days behind the bar at the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival appropriately enough in the old Central Station.

I just used some dulux primer/ undercoat we had left from a big decorating job. I also primed the underside as well but didn't put on a top coat. It all took two coats as the ply just drinks it in. The top coats are gloss for the facia and back, and vynil matt for the backscene

Ah well, Christmas over it was finally time to crack on, despite various calls on my time surveying pubs for the next Good Beer Guide, its a dirty job etc etc etc. The first quarter section of trackwork, the station throat, is now complete and its time to move on to the next quarter of the plan, the engine house side of the sorting sidings. The next bit also contains a three way, something Ive not built for a long while. It took a bit of looking at the wiring of it before deciding an order of construction. As the point contains all sort of daft angles of crossing, i'm going to fabricate the two crossings wired in common with point motor one as a single unit, and do it following the laser cut plan on the boards. Just must remember to thread chairs on before it all gets soldered up.

The ELR will be holding a model railway show in the Bury Transport Museum on Saturday and Sunday 4th and 5th April 2020. The show is open from 10am - 4pm each day. Admission is free but donations are more than welcome. Confirmed layouts so far North Ballachulish (EM), Hebble Vale Goods (EM), Haslingden (N) with more to be added and trade*. Come along and have a look at the models, have a ride on the railway (Blue Timetable in operation) and take some refreshment at the famous Trackside pub. * We are looking for a good RTR trader stocking all the red, blue and other boxes. Contact me if in the NW and free that weekend.

You mean this one? They do have a tendency to bend if you so much as look at them, especially when handling them. Soon rectified though.

Following dropping new wheelsets in to EM Gauge as mentioned above, Ive been doing a spot of work on the new Hornby Stanier brake van. A few things irked me about it, not least the moulded verandah guard rails and the moulded lamp irons. Armed only with a Swann Morton 10a blade I carefully scored out the infill between the guard rail and the stanchion to reveal fresh air. All 4 have been left down. The lamp irons were scraped off and replaced by some folded up 1mm brass shim. The NEM pickets were unscrewed and discarded and the mounting block hacked back level with the bottom of the sub frame to accommodate Spratt and Winkle couplings. All at nil extra cost, but I do suspect I will be getting some pain off Mr Franks to replace the buffers with the correct packed version. The part of my ancestry that is Scottish however has long taught me the value of short arms and deep pockets though Dave ;-) The whole thing then went into the paint shop for a quick airbrush with frame dirt and rust followed by some dirty wash which was wiped off with a soft cloth before a final application of weathering powders. Shame its got to wait till next month to make its debut on North Ballachulish at Model Rail Scotland at the SECC Glasgow. And no doubt a badgering to buy some packed buffers.

As flattering as it is to see North Ballachulish listed as a P4 layout, it is in actual fact EM Gauge. But what's 0.63 mil between friends lol

I've just converted mine to EM. Wheelsets dropped in first time, no slop on the pinpoints so Ive not bothered drilling out for new top hat bearings for the time being. Only a little interference from the brake blocks which was cured by shaving off a slight sliver of plastic off the back of them. Hornby for once seem to have located the brake shoes not far off their proper position. Clearance between the inside of the W iron mouldings is a midges dick over 23mm, unfortunately my micrometer is out of batteries so had to use my guessing stick.

I'm using Exactoscale chairs on the track. As it stands, especially in curves, the tension within the rail, despite pre bending, can pull the track out of gauge as the butanone cures the chair onto the ply sleeper, no matter how much you weight it down. The pins are there to help hold the track in gauge and are easier to apply than faffing around trying to drill holes and punch rivets in point timbers! There's an added advantage as well, in that you can solder the track feeds onto the bottom of the brass pin, thereby eliminating the need for unsightly dropper wires, with it making a neater solder joint on the pin, and it easily hidden in the ballast.

Following a three week hiatus, taking North Ballachulish to Warley, visiting a new grandson in Oslo, a day at Manchester show and administering a voting exercise for next years good beer guide, Ive finally this week been able to actually do some modelling. Track has actually started to be laid this week. As with all things theres always a snag and this one was realising that the new EM Gauge Society track disappointingly has incorrect sleeper spacing, so it was a case of upending it, cutting the webs out and re-spacing the sleepers prior to glueing them down. This was followed by the tedium of around 150 cutting point timbers. Never mind, its threading chairs on rail next! More on the blog at : https://newheymodelrailway.wordpress.com/

I'm hoping they will have arrived well before, and my 29 will be converted to EM in time to run on North Ballachulish.

We were back home by 9pm and North Ballachulish put to bed until its next appearance at Model Rail Scotland in February 2020. A rather good show with the layout running very smoothly apart from the occasional "operator error" , the soldering iron never left the tool box and in fact the only tool to come out was the fibreglass brush for track and wheel cleaning. The set up and strip down were seamless, after last years debacle of waiting a hour and 45 for the van to get in the hall we were gone by 7pm. Like most of the exhibitors I saw relatively little of the show other than the traders I needed to see, most of the time out from behind was spent chatting, you cant wander round the show without bumping into dozens of people you know! This was the scene at around 10 am on Saturday morning, it seemed a bit quieter until around 11ish when all of a sudden large crowds gathered. We had some really good comments and some unusual ones as well, with having one side of the L shape open to the public view, folk could see behind the scenes and of particular interest was the cassette system in the fiddle yards, as well as the usual queries about the scenics and the Faller car system. What we did notice though (and they can be seen on the photos) was that the hall lights cast a shadow of the lighting pelmets onto the layout, which was disappointing, something I've never experienced before. The great thing about the show though is the ability to pick up everything you need in one spot, and most of Greenbooth's building requirements were obtained this weekend including one of Hornby's new 0-6-0 Pecketts, just need Gordon Ashton to etch a chassis for EM and P4 for that one now! Thank you for all of the team at the Warley club for a very enjoyable weekend.

That one was the show before last!!

And so it begins. A morning spent cleaning wheels in preparation for the show, so out with the trusty Duette. Clean wheels and clean track are essential for good running so its time well invested. I'll declare North Ballachulish a cake free zone, but there will be an over abundance of wine gums and probably 75cl of a beverage in keeping with the West Highlands of Scotland. No, not Irn Bru.

So far the Greenbooth build had all been a bit arse about face in my usual order of construction, for example painting the finish on the baseboard outers and the basic backscene have been things always done at the end of the build. Continuing that theme I finished the lighting units this week, another job usually done at the end of the build. I've used two strips of warm white LEDs. I also started to prep track laying and building. First job was fitting a routing bit to the Dremel and attacking the baseboards, carefully routing out a recess in between where the tracks are going to place the uncoupling magnets. Its a heart stopping job at times making sure you don’t go through the baseboard and calls for a steady hand and patience with the Dremel – all done by hand and rack o’th eye. The magnets are fixed in place with two part epoxy. Ive decided to use permanent magnets in order to reduce the amount of wiring underneath and also make a simpler control panel – Ive also found the electromagnets (PK) I used on North Ballachulish a tad underwhelming in power. The next task has been to drill pilot holes and fix in brass tacks. I use these to anchor the rail to by soldering when point building, it avoids creep out of gauge whilst the Exactoscale chairs are curing on the ply sleepers and also gives the build a lot more strength. On points I usually put a pin in between every 5th or 6th sleeper. I also put pins in where every length of plain track goes, the bonus of this method is the pin protrudes below the baseboard and instead of having to put dropper wires in, I have a hard point to solder the track feed wires to, and which will give a good reliable track feed. Of course as always nothing ever goes quite to plan, after getting a good two thirds of this baseboard done, I managed to snap my last 1mm drill. Job stopped, I’ll get some replacements at Warley this weekend. https://newheymodelrailway.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/getting-down-to-brass-tacks/

I cant remember which one exactly but think it was Autumn 2017 - According to my signalmans log I did the job in Townsend Fold box on 18 August 2017, so its sometime after that!

I've converted a 122 to EM simply by spreading the wheels. I've had to reduce the BTB by . 5mm to get the over thick profile wheels through pointwork but it runs very well indeed. See my blog article https://newheymodelrailway.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/another-convert-to-the-cause/ It was also in the EMGS newsletter around 18 months ago.

Will be there with North Ballachulish (C32) but not in the location on the floor plan, as despite supplying plans and a photo of how the layout is exhibited, someone decided to put it in the centre of a long bin, so you could only see one (the short) side of the layout! After a word with t'management good sense has prevailed and we are now relocated on the end where C48 /C47 were.

Very good show and well worth a visit, some excellent layouts on display. Good trade support as well, picked up some useful items for the new layout build.

Greenbooth's lighting pelmets went up for the first time on Friday. As with North Ballachulish, it will be LED strip, warm white probably. I also unwrapped the new Peco EM track. It's quite impressive. Ive got to honestly say this is the first time Ive used Peco track in over 40 years! Ive previously used SMP and C&L flexitrack, but the one thing I don't like about both is that they use thin sleepers. This makes ballasting harder and it works loose easy. The deep (1.5 mm) sleeper of the Peco will help get a more solid bond. All my pointwork is going to be hand-built, as usual, I've already started filing and assembling common crossings, but despite having a Brazilian rain forests worth of wooden point sleepers it's all thin .8mm stuff, so I've had to buy another rain forest worth of 1.5 thick point timbering. Needed to build a test inch of track though to check the railhead heights matched before shelling out. They do so it's paint the baseboards this week then start laying track. I'm out at the Warley NEC show in just over a week with North Ballachulish so that will be an opportunity to stock up on various supplies for the build.